The Nature of Leeches
by ParlorGamesToMe
Summary: "'I'm not Jane," she tells him. His eyes glaze over, and he does not speak. "'I'm not Jane," she says again, her tone harsher. Thor doesn't even look at her."


**I.**

_"I never get tired of it," the smiling woman on the infomercial professes._

Jane and Thor are sitting on the couch, Mjolnir resting on the shattered glass coffee table. He wraps his arm around her shoulders. She leans into him. Rests her head. The television blares on, wrestling briefly with static, then unfolding into clarity. Wordlessly, they watch a series of women lessening themselves, shedding their flesh, standing triumphantly in front of the screen. Thor can't help but notice that the infomercial swaps out one woman for another. They thought he wouldn't notice. A thin replacement puts her hands on her hips. Beams.

A disembodied voice discusses payment plans.

Jane changes the channel—

**II.**

_"But we will have to rebuild. We did after New York, after the first attack. And do you think that Thor will pay for it? Did he pay for New York?"_

Jane untangles herself from Thor's grasp. She picks up a bowl of popcorn from the broken remains of the coffee table. He welcomes her back into his hold. In turn, she offers him a handful of popcorn. They chew silently, crunching glass in their mouth. Thor does not bleed.

A montage of New York dominates the screen. Thor can see himself reflected in the television, his own blood staining his hands. He reaches towards the bowl. Takes another handful of popcorn. Does not notice his brother upon a Chitauri speeder, the scenery around him paused, stagnant. His brother screams silently, his fists pounding and pounding against the television screen.

Jane changes the channel—

**III.**

_"It's a sort of antiquated parasitism," a tight-faced woman explains, the camera panning to a man on a hospital bed. She gestures at his black eye and the three leeches which rest upon his face. "In that, I mean an obsolete harm. No— a reversed damage, twisted into a cure._

_"Leeches are not well-regarded— do you know how many people feared them as kids? And still do? As a rule, any creature who takes blood without giving anything advantageous in return is any enemy. Yes, leeches aren't the friendliest creatures. But they offer more benefits than one would think._

_"If you met them in a lake at night, I wouldn't blame you for running, for shrieking. But now, scientists have understood that we can harness their detriments for our advancement. Though this looks like some sort of torture, we're actually healing this man. Or, rather, the leeches are._

_"It doesn't mean that they're friendly creatures. That they mean us well. They want our blood, and if we're giving it, of course they'll take it. It's not about our desire to heal, but their need to feed. I assure you, if they were placed upon his terrified face or his calm one, they would feed just the same. That's merely the nature of leeches."_

The tight-faced woman keeps talking, but Jane stops listening. She turns to the demigod beside her.

Jane changes—  
**IV.**

_"It's here," screeches a girl in a lavender slip, "It's here in the house with us!"_

"Thor," she whispers into his ear. When he turns to look at her face, her teeth are slick with blood. Sighing, she pushes his arm off of her shoulder.

"I'm not Jane," she tells him. His eyes glaze over, and he does not speak.

"I'm not Jane," she says again, harsher. Thor doesn't even look at her. If he did, he would notice that her eyes are blue. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she stares straight ahead.

The thing that looks like Jane changes the channel—

**V.**

_"When asked why he abducted the child from a stroller in the street all those years ago, the kidnapper replied, 'Because, if I didn't steal him, who was going to keep him alive? I can see the end. And it's coming, whether that child is with me or not. It's not like I committed a crime. I saved his life.'"_

Jane coughs, staining her white shirt in blood. Her eyes are green.

"Not again," she frowns, peeling off the offending clothing. A hand extends from out of the television, proffering a clean button-up top. She accepts it and the hand sinks back into the screen. "Thanks."

"It looks fetching," Thor admits.

"Yeah, it does, doesn't it? Just my size, too."

He grins feebly at her as she buttons up the shirt, her hands riddled with silvery scars in shapes of runes. If he focuses intently enough, he can discern the words. But he doesn't. His eyes turn to the television. She puts a button in the wrong hole, keeps buttoning up nothing, her fingers working busily in the air.

"I'm trying to show you something, you know," she huffs. Thor nods indulgently. "Fine. I know there's a fragment of awareness somewhere in there. You'll find it—I know you will."

Her mouth is a trapdoor, the hinge swinging open and closed.

Jane changes the channel—

**VI.**

_"¡Ladrón! ¡Ello viene! Es en tu corazón y no ves—no ves," the woman cries woodenly, throwing her hands to her heart. Her wedding ring slips off her fingers, clattering against the ground. She does not pick it up._

"Is this really what you want, Thor?" Jane stands up, her hands on her hips. She shakes her head, her arms falling slack. Honestly, she's not entirely sure if the action is something Jane would normally do. If she's not Jane, then she's nothing. The thought dilutes her; the color evaporates off her skin, floating in wispy waves, painting the ceiling in her flesh. She coughs up an old rusty door key, a miniature bottle of whiskey, a chewed doll's head. Thor picks up the head, rolling it in his palm, its brown hair shedding across his skin. Jane opens the bottle and downs the whiskey. Sighing, she tosses the bottle against the wall.

"I am Jane," she tells the wisps. "I am Jane. I am Jane." A few dutiful wisps crawl back to her, staining her skin the merest shade paler. The lie is enough to keep her there, for the moment.

The image on the television shakes, then stills. The picture falls from the screen. Something pushes it back into place—something with thin, pale hands and spindly fingers. Thor still doesn't speak.

"You can't keep doing this," she sighs. "I want to help you, Thor."

"With what?" He squints at her, then blinks away the thought of trouble. "Jane, I don't understand."

"I'm not Jane," she says again, the wisps fleeing from her skin. "At least, I don't think I am."

"But you could be?"

She stares down at the ground, the remote nearly falling from her hand. She bites her lip.

Pauses.

Thor cocks his head, wondering if she can even hear him, "Are you real?"

She bites her lip again, the blood dripping down her chin, her neck, onto her new shirt. This time, she doesn't remove it. Her mouth falls open, then shuts. It stays closed for a very long time.

The television loses its clarity. Regains it, the picture sharper but almost imperceptibly darker. One minute, the chef is talking in English, the next Russian, and the next Latin. Thor doesn't notice. The All-Tongue translates for him just the same.

When Jane speaks, her voice is louder but less certain.

"I suppose I am real—whatever I am," she admits, "whenever I am. If not here, then somewhere, sometime, where universes and realities have splintered and branched into this exact instant. It's certainly possible. Actually—"

Thor blinks. Turns his head towards the screen.

Jane changes the channel—

**VII.**

_"Have you ever seen anything like it?" The girl turns around breathlessly, the skirt of her green dress whirling. She watches herself spin from three different angles. From the middle mirror, another reflection emerges, its edges blurry. It fades into a green and black and pale shadow. Disappears, except for a thin, screaming mouth._

"Have you ever heard of Eternalism? Universal time block theory?" Jane asks him finally, when the television goes mute. Thor does not wrench his eyes from the television, from the faded mouth in the mirror. He lets her speak. "Do they even have philosophical theories concerning the ontological nature of time on Asgard?"

He shakes his head but doesn't stop her.

"Okay, so here it goes: we look at things incorrectly. Our perception of time flow is just incomplete, which- which makes us believe that there's only one linear existence—a one-way train ride from life to death; you're born and if things go well, you die a long while later. But that progression is- is imperfect. The train doesn't just go one way. There isn't just one stop. I don't even think that there's only one train— each person boards their own, so to speak. There are an infinite amount of- of- superimposed trains existing and occurring in an infinite amount of concurrent locations!

"But because our minds can only handle what they think has happened or has happened presently—they can't take into account the future—they offer us an incomplete portion of reality.

"All right, are you okay? Sorry, it's a faulty notion, but it's the best I could do under the circumstances of my nebulous existence. I'm babbling, aren't I? Do you get it?"

Thor nods slowly. Squinting, he watches the girl on the television. A giant hole mars her midsection. She falls against the mirror, each translation of herself landing at alternate instants. He can almost see a bloody-knuckled figure banging its fists against the mirrored glass. He bites his lip. Chews. Swallows a thin strip of skin. Waits for Jane to speak, for her words to unfurl in metaphysical revelations.

"Good, because it gets a bit more complicated. So, as living beings, we have a need to- to psychologically systematize the flow of time. This need is rooted in language, in conjugation, in calendars and in clocks.

"We perceive time to be occurring one systematic event after the other. Then, we link those events together in order to form our progressive timelines; but time doesn't work that way. Every event is occurring at once. Right now, London is being formed; it's burning; you're fighting Malekith and drifting across realms. Our unidirectional perception of time is just an appeasing psychological construct!"

Unable to suppress her enthusiasm, she throws her arms up, flinging the remote across the room. It flies through the wall, soaring elsewhere.

"The remote slipped," she blushes, tucking a lock hair behind her ear Thor nods his head, smiling politely.

"Anyway, the implications are just fascinating," she breathes, her cheeks ruddy, the jagged points of her ribs moving up and down. She spits a hank of hair out of her mouth. Tries to reign in her excitement. Fails. The window unlatches itself, letting the remote back inside.

"For instance, we view our realities differently," she explains. "Like, when you were a kid and the vase broke—or, breaks. You insist that the break occurs by someone else's hands. The person you envision claims that those hands are yours, not theirs. Well, those are two alternate—but no less valid—perceptions of reality! So, while this could be happening, we both perceive alternative instances!"

The remote slides back into her hands.

Jane changes the channel—

**VIII.**

_"What I'm trying to say is that they've been approaching the end for ages now," the news anchor gesticulates wildly, as if he's trying to convey his message in sign language. "The end will happen, despite the delay. You have to understand, there's no stopping it. It's almost time. It's almost time."_

"Actually, Thor," she adds animatedly, "you are technically both alive and dead. Basically, like all creatures, you exist in an oscillatory state!"

A voice echoes from Thor's lips, rougher, sadder than he remembers.

"Loki is still deceased—but he breathes," he understands. Jane leaps towards him, pressing her red lips against his. He does not pull away. Her blood lines his throat.

"Good!" She beams when they pull away. "You're finally starting to get it. Or, at least, most of it. I don't think I need the remote anymore. Do you?"

She sets it aside onto the shards of broken glass. On their own, the buttons move.

The channel changes—

**IX.**

_"I don't know how else to explain it—I woke up, and I was dead," a wide-eyed young man babbles, standing outside a hospital. His hair is white, white, white, before the hijacking occurs, before his hair blackens and his skin twists, folding over itself, assuming new framework. Desperately, he tugs at the sun's rays, wrenching them from the sky. He stuffs light down his throat. Vomits. Beams shatter against the ground. He scoops them up, palms pierced, and rolls them into balls. Pushes them down, his throat bleeding._

"It's time to go now," Jane says, but her voice is as full of static as the television screen is. She shakes, her edges blurring, her eyes in hazy Technicolor. "God, I hope you're listening. I hope you—"

Shades flee from her skin, rising upwards in a conical fury. She screams in the color of bones. Thor looks to the screen.

_The green-eyed man in the television turns to stare at his brother. His mouth drips with thread. He speaks in blood, "Do you understand, Thor? Do you really understand?"_

Thor is not entirely sure that he does.


End file.
